Abstract

This study looks at international co-publishing in Finland and the citation counts of
publications in different disciplinary groups in 1990–2009. The results presented here are based on
the Thomson Reuters Web of Science (WoS) publication and citation database from 1990 to 2009.

The share of international co-publishing in all of Finland’s WoS publications increased from 25
per cent to 49 per cent in 1990–2009. In tandem with international co-publishing becoming more
common, there has been an increase in the relative share of national cooperation between
organisations, whereas the share of publications produced in national, intra-organisational
cooperation in all of Finland’s international publications has declined. The trend of co-publishing
in Finland can thus be described as an increase in transboundary cooperation – both between
countries and between organisations.

The share of single-author publications declined in 1990–2009. As an exception to most main
scientific disciplines, single authorship remained clearly the most typical form of international
authorship in humanities journals in 2006–2009; 70 per cent of these publications were written by a
single author. While the relative share of single authorship has decreased, the number of
co-authors in a publication has gone up: in 1990–2009, the number of co-authors in national
publications increased from three to four, while this number in international co-publications has
gone up from five to seven authors.

In Finland’s international co-publications, the co-author was most typically affiliated with an
organisation in the EU15+ states. The second most typical participants in international
publications were co-authors from North America, and third most typical were co-authors from the
Nordic countries. No change took place in the order of the three most common country groups within
the period of examination.

In 1990–2008, international co-publications were on average cited more times than publications
produced in national cooperation. The citation counts of the former exceeded the average global
level throughout the period. The more authors that were involved in a publication, the more times
it was cited on average. The high citation counts of international co-publications are partly
explained by the fact that, on average, they involve a higher number of co-authors than national
publications.

A growing trend in international co-publishing has been cooperation involving researchers from
more than one country group in addition to Finland. The more country groups that were involved in a
publication, the higher its citation count on average. In the sphere of national cooperation,
gauged by the citation counts, inter-organisational cooperation produced science with a higher
impact than intra-organisational co-authorship.

To summarise, this study indicates that co-publishing of Finnish scientists has diversified: the
share of publications produced as a result of international cooperation, involvement of several
country groups, and national inter-organisational cooperation in all WoS publications increased,
and the more diverse the co-authorship was, the higher the citation count.